Primary a Mixed Bag for Public Education Candidates
Sometime between 1 and 2 a.m. on June 10, 2011, Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, delivered a warning to his fellow Texas House members.
"In the end, the people of the state of Texas must have the final say," said Turner, the latest in a series of Democrats who had lined up to seal in the public record their intense disapproval of what was about to happen.
Shortly after, his colleagues passed a bill that solidified a $5.4 billion reduction in funding to public schools. Now, almost a year later, the people of Texas have had their say — but ...
Comments (6)
Gretchen Weicker via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Out here on the frontier at the dawn of Texas, public one-room schools (and churches) were the first little clapboard buildings anchoring civilized society in the Wild West.
Michael B Openshaw
The questioned unanswered is- how many of the candidates the ParentPAC backed LOST on Tuesday?
Kim Burkett via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The school finance system is so convoluted, counter-intuitive, and broken that there are very few people that truly understand it. That includes most lawmakers, with the exception Hochberg and Eissler. I certainly hope they find some bench strength to replace this knowledge drain. They will need it when the courts tell them to fix school finance - AGAIN.
Dinah Miller
Texas Parent PAC had eight endorsed winners, an additional six in the runoff, and 13 who lost.
We are very proud of each endorsed candidate. Hopefully, the next legislative session will have more legislators who understand strong public schools are essential to Texas' economic prosperity.
Dinah Miller
Vice Chair, Texas Parent PAC
Alice Taylor
Universal free public education is the one thing that has push us ahead of other democratic countries and will keep us prosperous and free in future, so I am happy to see ANY represented defeated who promotes limiting public support for education and who advocates any education system that does not support the educational welfare of all children.
Shapiro, Eissler et al, did not support universal, free public education. They did not advocate for it during the last legislative session, but instead pandered to those who wish to promote charter schools at the expense of public eduction, testing at the expense of learning, and budget cuts even when alternative funds like the Rainy Day founds, were available. For the first time in 70 years Texas did not fully fund public education. Because of the policies they rammed through the last session we are now 15,000 teachers short in Texas (Dallas Morning News). That's an average of 100 teachers a school district. We will lose more next year and we'll have more kids to teach.
The reason TT can't see any trends in who was elected and who wasn't is that the voters aren't looking for Republicans or Democrats when it comes to education policy. They are looking for education advocates who have some common sense. Voters know that the vast majority of kids are going to public schools and that those public schools must be funded and run by competent teachers and administrators. Gutting public education does no one any good and voters know that.
So good riddance to so-called "education reformers". They weren't reformers at all. They were reactionaries. I hope that the new group takes a hard look at the policies that were put in place and puts the education steering wheel back in the hands of local school boards and educators. And putting some money back in the tank would help, too.
gypsy314 ne
Do away with public schools. School vouchers are the answer.